Becoming critical: Exploring the confluence of justice, belonging, and love with 6th grade youth

Megan Custer,Nick Liebelt,Ryan Oto,Ngan Nguyen,Peder Ericson

doi:10.31274/tcse.11520

Abstract

This paper recounts stories of a sixth grade teaching team’s efforts to help each other in the becoming of critical social educators. Struggling against the conditions of oppression in schools and the toxicity of what we call “copy room conversations” requires a kind of support and solidarity we created through our small collective that was grounded in vulnerability with and commitment to one another. This piece tells our stories in the hope that others who share our values might come together in their own school communities to form collectives like ours. We hope to provide a model for building solidarity with those who also aim to become critical educators and to reject the white supremacist politics of schooling.

Highlights

The call for this inaugural issue of the Critical Social Educator is, “What does it mean to be a critical social educator?” We have no definitive answer, for we do not know what it means to arrive at this location
Grounded in the idea that justice work is never complete (Tuck & Yang, 2018), we as sixth grade teachers lovingly offer this question instead: What does it mean to be in the process of becoming a critical social educator? This subtle shift underscores the reality that we came into teaching with different beliefs, hopes, aspirations, and expectations that shifted and changed as we grew together
Our own reflections on and interrogation of ourselves is in relationship to those we work alongside, so that we might build a community fueled by critical love and ãOTO, NGUYEN, CUSTER, ERICSON & LIEBELT

Summary

Introduction

The call for this inaugural issue of the Critical Social Educator is, “What does it mean to be a critical social educator?” We have no definitive answer, for we do not know what it means to arrive at this location. Throughout this essay, we tell our stories of our journeys in working to become critical social educators of sixth graders, a process of unlearning the politics of schooling (Apple, 1990) (which show up in what we call “copy room conversations”), to center our humanity with one another, and to collectively build a space grounded in vulnerability with, and commitment to, one another. I hoped this text would push us to frame our collective work as a practice of building the critical capacity to think about ourselves and schooling, and to avoid brazenly taking up the authority and power that came with being a “teacher.” We started by imagining what school could and should look like based on our critical perspectives on schooling As everyone shared their responses, inevitably we came to an impasse: Was any of this really possible? It became a space where we suddenly could continually re-ground and ensure that we were living the anti-oppressive beliefs we espoused

Copy Room Conversations

Findings

Closing Thoughts